Mysterious text messages from eToro: what happened
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A torrential downpour of SMS from eToro, a well-known trading platform, has arrived on the smartphones of many Italians in recent hours – still impossible to specify how many – alarming many. In fact, the SMS contains a validation code, those numbers that must be entered to authorize an online operation on most sites that offer online services: banks and e-commerce above all.
The event is, to date, rather mysterious. For two reasons. The first is that many people who do not have, nor have ever had, an account on eToro also received the text message; the second is that the message does not contain any scam attempts. So no link pointing to phishing sites in which you are asked to enter data (which is then stolen by criminals for malicious purposes). But if it’s not a fraud, what happened?
If at first one could think of a data theft or a hacking of the trading platform, eToro itself denies this circumstance: “We can confirm that eToro’s security systems have not been breached” lets the company know a Republic, which however confirms the story of the “unsolicited” messages. eToro’s hypothesis is that there is an “attempt by a third party to use telephone numbers without authorization”. It is possible, therefore, that an individual or organization has illegally taken possession of a stock of telephone numbers and sent mass text messages. Why he exploited the name of eToro and, above all, for what purpose, are questions that currently remain unanswered.
The company, however, advises anyone who received the text message “despite not having an eToro account” to ignore the message. “If you have an eToro account and have any questions, please contact our customer support team.”
The topic of illegal databases of telephone numbers – often associated with the names of their owners – has been known for some time. These mega-packages of numbers are resold on the dark web at prices accessible even to small criminals and are used both to conduct phishing campaigns and by some abusive call centers that offer contracts or services of any kind.
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